Hockey players play on a hard surface usually ice, concrete or in a field. A hockey stick is used to control, shoot and pass a puck in ice hockey. The hockey stick is gripped by the player usually with both hands. The hockey player, by flexing arms and bending wrists moves and controls the puck. The strength of the arms is important to the control of the puck. Strong arms and wrists can project the puck off of the stick with greater velocity making shots harder to stop and passes harder to intercept.
Strengthening the arms of a hockey layer is traditionally done by practice or by weight training. Practice can be physically exhausting to the player's body while only providing small increases in arm strength. Weight training is good for overall strength however, the specific muscles used to control the hockey stick while handling the puck are hard to isolate.
Hockey players come in all sizes and skill levels. A training device needs to be able to accommodate different skill levels with minimum difficulty. Adding a weight to the hockey stick would provide a weight training experience focused on the specific muscles used to handle, pass and shoot a puck.
Attaching weights to the hockey stick may result in damaging the shaft of the hockey stick by the fasteners or the weight itself. An example of this method is found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,364,560('560). The integrity of the shaft is compromised by the thumbscrew used to tighten against the shaft to hold the weight in place.
Furthermore, the weight needs to change for different skill and strength levels. As the hockey player develops, more weight is used to continue to strengthen the arms. When used for injury recovery, the weight should be minimal and be able to easily be modified to increase the strengthening effect as the player recovers. The '560 patent and U.S. Pat. No. 3,834,697 both illustrate a single weight added to the shaft. Additional weights are not easily added and the incremental weight may be too great for some developing hockey players.
Accordingly, there is a need for a device that can be easily added to and removed from a hockey stick shaft, having a capability to ass or subtract weights to customize the weight for the hockey player.